Continuous data protection (“CDP”), also called continuous backup, generally refers to the backup of data on a computer by automatically saving a copy of every change made to that data. While traditional backup solutions take a snapshot of the files or data on a computer at a specific time, CDP essentially captures every new version of the data saved on the computer in real-time. CDP may be performed at the file-level or at the device-level. Device-level CDP generally allows a user or administrator to roll back the entire state of the device, such as a disk drive, to any point in time, while file-level CDP may allow a user to view and select a specific version of a particular data file to restore.
File-level CDP is typically implemented through a background service executing on a computer that monitors specified files and folders stored on local or remote storage volumes. When a monitored data file is changed, the new, modified version of the file is copied to one or more backup locations, such as internal storage, an external/removable storage device, a remote storage system, and/or a storage service in the “cloud.” In order to reduce the storage space required on the backup locations, the CDP process may perform compression of the new version of the file. Because multiple versions of the same file may have a large amount of common data, the CDP process may further perform de-duplication of the new version of the file against a previously stored version to remove the duplicate data. In addition, if the backed-up file is to be copied to a backup location accessible to multiple users, such as an external/removable storage device or cloud-based storage, the CDP process may encrypt the new version of the file before copying it to the backup location.
The compression, de-duplication, and encryption of the new version of the backed-up file all require extra processing cycles and memory usage, invariably leading to additional power usage on the computer. While this may be acceptable on desktop computers and workstations which are attached to an external power source, for laptops and notebook computers which often run on battery power, the additional power usage may unacceptably limit the working time for the computer when not attached to external power. It is desirable to maintain some level of CDP on these mobile devices, however, to guard against virus infections, hardware failures, lost or stolen media, system shutdown due to exhausted battery, and the like.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.